Some thoughts now that our off-season and pre-season are over and we have a general idea of what we have here:

- We lost to the Bulls twice and looked a lil lost on offense --- seems to be the trend. The Bulls do play some hellacious defense, however, so I'd expect that our offense would look better against lesser foes.
- These pre-season games didn't feel like pre-season games. Very competitive.
- I love that we were matched up against the Bulls in the pre-season, to give the Pacers that much more competition to raise their game against. Chicago didn't go easy on us either... it was a great test and should prepare us that much more for the season.
- Chicago is damn good.... even better than last year... they're deeper, and don't seem to rely as heavily on DRose, which won't make them as susceptible to fatigue in the post-season, which I personally believe was a huge factor as to why Indy was able to keep it close in the playoffs last year... DRose looked like a man on fumes. He probly won't be running on fumes this next post-season.
- Hansbrough is slowly but surely becoming the best player on this team. You can tell the minute he steps on the court, the other team groans. His shot is fast as hell. Watch the time it takes for him to go from crouching to shot release... it's like half a second. That has to be frustrating for a defender. I made the comment a week ago that I felt he'd still outplay West for starter position, and I can still see that happening. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. In fact, until West gets up to speed, I think Hansbrough needs to continue to start.
- The Pacers as a team need to be more in control when they penetrate to the rim. So many times our guys will make a great move to get to the rim and then --- BRICK. Slow down guys, you got there just fine, now focus, slow down and make the shot. That's what is killing our shooting percentage.
- We didn't go full-out on D in those games. That's encouraging. I felt like they were only giving 60-70% effort on D, and that's okay in the pre-season. I know if the post-season started, that defensive intensity would ramp up two- three-fold and that is scary to think about. I think our D can be really, really good. We didn't show our hand in the pre-season, imo. That was evident by the lineups, especially at the end of game 2 when Chicago nearly lost the lead in the final minutes having their starting lineup in and we had our 2nd and 3rd stringers in. It was clear to me that our coaching staff was more focused on learning our team rather than trying to win a pre-season game.

PGisthefuture

12-23-2011, 02:09 AM

Some thoughts now that our off-season and pre-season are over and we have a general idea of what we have here:

- We lost to the Bulls twice and looked a lil lost on offense --- seems to be the trend. The Bulls do play some hellacious defense, however, so I'd expect that our offense would look better against lesser foes.
- These pre-season games didn't feel like pre-season games. Very competitive.
- I love that we were matched up against the Bulls in the pre-season, to give the Pacers that much more competition to raise their game against. Chicago didn't go easy on us either... it was a great test and should prepare us that much more for the season.
- Chicago is damn good.... even better than last year... they're deeper, and don't seem to rely as heavily on DRose, which won't make them as susceptible to fatigue in the post-season, which I personally believe was a huge factor as to why Indy was able to keep it close in the playoffs last year... DRose looked like a man on fumes. He probly won't be running on fumes this next post-season.
- Hansbrough is slowly but surely becoming the best player on this team. You can tell the minute he steps on the court, the other team groans. His shot is fast as hell. Watch the time it takes for him to go from crouching to shot release... it's like half a second. That has to be frustrating for a defender. I made the comment a week ago that I felt he'd still outplay West for starter position, and I can still see that happening. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. In fact, until West gets up to speed, I think Hansbrough needs to continue to start.
- The Pacers as a team need to be more in control when they penetrate to the rim. So many times our guys will make a great move to get to the rim and then --- BRICK. Slow down guys, you got there just fine, now focus, slow down and make the shot. That's what is killing our shooting percentage.
- We didn't go full-out on D in those games. That's encouraging. I felt like they were only giving 60-70% effort on D, and that's okay in the pre-season. I know if the post-season started, that defensive intensity would ramp up two- three-fold and that is scary to think about. I think our D can be really, really good. We didn't show our hand in the pre-season, imo. That was evident by the lineups, especially at the end of game 2 when Chicago nearly lost the lead in the final minutes having their starting lineup in and we had our 2nd and 3rd stringers in. It was clear to me that our coaching staff was more focused on learning our team rather than trying to win a pre-season game.

Exactly, this is why people need to quit worrying and complaining. The coaching staff was basically trying to see what we had, what combinations to go with, which lineup was most effective. I don't think we should take much, if anything, from those games. Playing against the Bulls only helped in that regard because the guys were tested against one of the best teams in the league. It also gives the coaching staff time to go over film with what players are doing wrong, use these few days till preseason starts to work with the team on what they were doing wrong, and come up with rotations. The thing to take from these games was the fact that Tyler Hansbrough could turn into our second or even first option on offense, who would have thought that the night we drafted him? A lot of people like to look at the negatives on this forum, think positive for a minute, this team is gonna be special.